there that's giving republicans a lot of confidence >> bret: mark, do you see it that way? >> well, i do think the mail-in voting in several last previous elections has really helped the democrats because most people don't understand the math of mail-in voting which is if you have a vote in the bank it's done. if someone you expect to vote on election day there's maybe a 90% chance they show up. so what was happening is, the republicans were losing one to two points because the falloff on election day, it's raining, my kid's sick whatever was disproportionately hurting the republicans. if they even that out, and it looks like they're doing a better job this time, they could pick up one or two points and us pool sisters are ike willy to look better because i think our polls will be more accurate despite all this mail-in voting so that's an important leveller. i think the edge that we are he seeing here is a little bit towards trump in what otherwise

is an election on a razor's edge. >> bret: yeah. nate silver looks at this, prediction model, it stands at 50.2-49.5. obviously that fluctuates. it's a model. the rcp average is, you know, tracking within two points, 49.4-47.8. what are you looking at the final two and a half weeks here alex? >> i think a couple of things are important. pollsters i've talked to on the republican side admittedly are telling me that for the last three weeks they've seen trump tick up ever so marginally. and i think at this election, whoever the spotlight is on at the end is losing. because, frankly, voters have their doubts about both candidates and kamala harris's strategy, now that she may be a little bit behind is to get out there and make her case, and that may not be good. because like the humor last

night at the big dinner, al smith, kamala harris is part of our humor now but she's mostly the punch line not the one telling the joke. >> interesting mark that analogy, when the music stops you need a chair. if you're the last one that's the focus of this election, maybe that's not a good thing. what about the reverberation from our interview here on special report for vice-president harris and what that means, what it potentially portends? >> i thought the harris strategy was odd. she came on with the idea of attacking donald trump. so attacking donald trump on fox news with all the people who like donald trump doesn't seem like a very smart strategy unless what you're really doing is just reinforcing to your base, hey, i can take on bret baier, i can take on fox news, i'm feisty. because after all, if you look at what the harris campaign is doing, they're finding weaknesses and they're trying to plug them.

they're going after black men, they're very much trying to go to the swing states where they think that they're losing votes, and so i think her strategy is plug weakness after weakness. i think trump on the other side has a couple of good issues, evs, fracking, that he's playing in the swing states, and i think those are the two different closing campaign strategies that i see out there. >> bret: yeah. last thing alex strange play for that interview is what beening ma's saying. >> yeah. i think she -- the closer that we get to the election, the less this is about issues and who has the strength to lead this nation in a turbulent world things even falling apart at home. she wanted to go in the lion's den an old strategy i'll stand up and be strafed she couldn't answer questions on immigration and why she opened the boarder. she couldn't answer the question

on where she stood on transgender money for surgery for people in prison. if you can't answer the questions, it's hard to demonstrate strength >> bret: gentlemen, as always, it's enlightening. we'll have you back before this election happens. thanks >> up next, our whatever happened to segment on the college admissions scandal, we have the first interview the man accused of being behind it and later the panel on the final 18 days of this campaign season. ♪

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fr the first day of kindergarten through the day they graduate high school, in california, 38% of students attend a public school that fails to meet minimum health standards. prop 2 will fund urgent repairs at local schools. protect kids from toxic mold and asbestos. ensure clean water. and to fix what's actually broken, all public funds go to local schools. without raising taxes. yes on 2. all kids deserve a safe place to learn. >> bret: in tonight's whatever happened to segment a fox news exclusive the man behind the scandal over wealthy parents paying to get their children into prominent colleges and

universities. correspondent matt finn has the first-ever interview with rick singer the person accused of masterminding that scheme. >> everything that the fbi and the u.s. attorney and everybody else in the world said i did, i did it. >> reporter: 64-year-old rick singer accepted at least $25 million from parents to get their kids into college, including actresses felicity huffman and lower loughlin among dozens of people find or imprisoned for their role his elaborate scheme involved fake test scores photos coupled with coaches and administrators who took singer's money in what he called side door deals. >> i want to apologize profusely to all the families that i hurt, all the kids that i hurt, the administrators that i hurt, my own family. >> reporter: singer was sentenced to 42 months for racket tearing money laundering and obstruction. he spent 16 months at a federal prison camp in pensacola and is

now in an la half way house. singer insists his scheme did not rob qualified students. instead, he claims, college coaches and departments meet budgets and in some cases even bring in extra cash by setting aside spots for vip families willing to make major donations or give favors. >> in 90% of the cases, the coaches every year are calling me saying i got a spot open. i need to raise this amount of money. find me a family. >> reporter: fox news reached out to schools singer has made claims about. yale university responded with no comment. usc points to a small number of employees who, quote, deceived the university. singer was punished but he feels the universities have not faced the same scrutiny. the now-convicted felon says the clock on unethical admissions may never run out. >> do you think the college admissions system can still be gamed? is it being gamed now? >> every day. >> reporter: matt finn, fox news. >> bret: up next the panel on

one of the last weekends of the campaign season. plus winners and losers. first, here's what some of our fox affiliates around the country are covering tonight. wjzy in charlotte with details about the brazen escape of four inmates three of whom remain at large tonight. the inmates escaped from the chester field county detention center monday night through a ventilation system. an alleged female accomplice is also being sought. >> fox 29 in philadelphia as a house explosion leaves at least one person dead, you see the remains there. it happened in chester county. neighbors reported hearing what sounded like multiple blasts at that structure. this is a live look at oakland california from fox two, right now more than fire fighters are at the scene of a four alarm fire you can see in the distance that smoke plume. we'll monitor that but another big story there tonight. the last survivor on the uss utah during the attack on pearl harbor turns 105 years old.

warren upton of san hoe says celebrated his birthday thursday. he is only one of 18 living pearl harbor survivors. thank you for your service, sir. happy birthday. that's tonight's live look. outside the beltway from special report, we'll be right back. ♪ here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need, and the flavor you love. so, here's to now... now available: boost max!

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it's one more way aspen dental is in your corner. ♪ >> we will build towards a future where we have an economy that works for all americans. >> we ran a great country. we had everything going, the world respected us. we can't let this woman get in. >> he is more popular at this point in the campaign than he was at this point in the 2020 campaign or the 2016 campaign. >> there's seven states that are going to come down a very small margin and kamala harris has a pathway to win in each of them. >> bret: it's close and just pointing out, as you look back

live at the white house, it is pink. it's pink tonight and several nights for breast cancer awareness month. but the focus is not washington, dc. it's on these seven states. one of them is michigan and the candidates are going there nonstop. in fact, the stops today, you can see on the map here a number of them for both candidates. and the big issue in michigan continues to be the economy and what people feel about their expenses. if you look at since president biden was in office and vice-president harris january 2021, a family spends an average of a thousand dollars or more on goods and services more than they did, food, shelter. inflation is real and that's from michigan. so let's start there we'll bring in our panel, byron york chief political correspondent of the washington examiner the five cohost jessica tarlov and new york times opinion columnist ross.

ross what do you make of this focus on michigan obviously seven states are really really tight and we were talking before we came on, it just seems like there are fewer and fewer undecided voters. >> yeah. michigan gives you a couple of really interesting sub plots. one is the clash between basically two visions of the auto industry and the auto economy. you have, you know, the harris campaign emphasizing the idea that the biden administration has spent a lot of money to basically help carry the auto industry into a greener future, and you have the trump campaign countering and saying, no, you know, electric vehicle mandates will be the death of the auto industry. so you have kind of rare in this election a real head to head policy clash and then you have the fact that michigan has a small overall but meaningful muslim population relative to other states which has this weird, you know, this weird israel palestinian dynamic in the election, where both jewish voters and muslim voters are unhappy with the biden

administration and the trump campaign is basically trying to make inroads with both groups. >> bret: yeah, it's really interesting. look at the rcp average of the battle ground states it hasn't really changed much. they're still within just a couple points in each one of these byron new york times talks about pennsylvania and based on the 2024 camden county the keystone state is a cornerstone of democrat's so called blue wall according to nate silver's 2024 forecast the candidate who wins pennsylvania wins the election 90% of the time. pennsylvania is a state of contrast from the philadelphia mega opulous to old industrial cities large swats of and lash a battle ground rural polarization is starkest in pennsylvania where we did the interview with vice-president kamala harris. a lot of focus there. >> trump people are feeling more confident about pennsylvania right now provided they can win

georgia and north carolinas which are kind of threshold states to even fight out in pennsylvania. i think harris made a mistake not going to the al smith dinner. in 2020 catholics were 25% of the electorate. joe biden won 52/47 but recent polls i've seen show trump ahead among catholics 52/47. so bad idea not to go to that dinner. on the other hand, one more thing about michigan, just listened to kamala harris's speech to uaw workers in lansing and she's actually getting better. which is what happens when you campaign a lot, and she didn't get to use the primaries to improve her campaign style, as most candidates do. but now she's actually a stronger candidate going into these last couple scrapings speaking of the al smith dinner, jessica, we have the taped part from vice-president harris and a piece from former president trump. take a listen. >> maybe don't say anything about catholics.

>> i would never do that no matter where i was. that would be like criticizing detroit in detroit. >> my opponent feels like she does not have to be here which is deeply disrespectful to the event and, in particular, to our great catholic community. but if you really wanted vice-president harris to accept your invitation, i guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in minneapolis. >> bret: there were some zingers, some good lines. if you look at the poll, the pew research poll has catholics favoring the former president 52-45. so what about that video with the snl jokes in there? that work? >> bret: i think that it works for a certain audience. i almost feel like we're at the point where the undecided voters, the true ones, are in the hundreds maybe low thousands that are actually considering this and everyone is basically going to their corners at this

point. and i think that the harris campaign, as byron mentioned, they have a much-more truncated amount of time to be able to be doing this campaign and they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. she was in wisconsin during the al smith dinner, if you remember back to 2016 when we did the look at what happened with hillary clinton and why she lost, one of the reasons that people came down is she didn't even go to wisconsin. kamala harris is trying not to make any mistakes that we have seen have been detrimental to past democratic candidacies so she's out there and she thinks it's more important to do a rally where no doubt there are catholic voters in attendance or someone will tell a catholic what a great time they had than coming back to new york to do the al smith dinner. i wanted to say something about pennsylvania though which obviously is the crux of this. in the latest new york times sienna poll of pennsylvania voters it showed she was getting 12% of the republican vote. if kamala harris can manage to pull that off to take such a sizable chunk of the anti trump vote, convert that from nikki

haley voters to kamala harris voters, it's going to be a much rosier election for her on november 5th. >> bret: yeah. ross, i'm not dwelling on nate silver, but he has this interesting take that she faces a tougher environment than clinton or biden did. harris probably faces a tougher environment than clinton 16, biden 20, incumbent parties around the world are struggling cultural pendulum swinging conservative ingrayings big deals to voters plus biden fed up and should have quit sooner in the words of nate silver. ross, i mean, it is a fascinating back and forth. >> yeah. i mean, i think nate's right about that. i think the thing that you'll hear from some liberals saying, you know, how can harris possibly be losing, that sort of -- it's always the question that liberals have facing donald trump and some republican candidates, too, have haded that question but i don't think it's at all surprising that this would be a tougher election,

certainly than 2020 when trump was presiding over covid. it's been a difficult four years. all of the factors that silver list ready incredibly important in this election and i think foreign policy is sort of an underrated issue beyond israel/palestinian. the two candidates aren't debating it that much but just the sense that the world has unravelled more on biden/harris's watch than it did on donald trump's watch, i think it's sort of a subtle but important factor just making it difficult for harris in ways that were not at all the case in 2020 and 2016. >> bret: yeah. that's true. okay, winners and losers. winner first byron. >> my winner is spacex. if you saw the landing of its big booster, it was caught by those chop sticks on the landing pad in texas, just an incredible, incredible effort. really fantastic. my loser, as you reported earlier in the show, cuba. making an effort to save electricity amid shortages now power's gone out for the whole

place. it's all dark, it's a system that has not worked for more than 60 years. >> bret: jessica winner and loser. >> my winner is jimmy carter. he made it to a hundred but what he really wanted to do was make it to the first day of early voting in georgia so he could cast his vote for kamala harris and thank you for using a lively picture. i can't look at that almost dead picture that is everywhere usually in the press. my loser, if you want to, is for terrorist sympathizers everywhere. the idf was able to eliminate senwar the head of hamas and actually this actually goes beyond this week, they have been on a hot streak taking out terrorist heads from hezbollah to hamas and it sounds like there could be a big attack against iran coming again. so congratulations to the idf and the israeli people. >> bret: it has been quite a run there. ross, winner and loser. >> i'm going to go with baseball and say that the winner is baseball nicknames and baseball

announcers. because the big hit of the baseball postseason last night was delivered by a cleveland guardian slugger named john kenzie noel who gets called big christmas and a mourns i think the spanish announcers started singing feliz navidad. and then the loser is the hopes of a subway series for the moment but we'll see how the new york mets do tonight. >> bret: all right, panel, thank you so much. have a great weekend. >> thank you. ♪ ♪ >> bret: you know that sound, it's friday. time for notable quotables. >> the mastermind of this day of shear evil is no more. >> now is the time to move on move toward a ceasefire in gaza. >> when did you first notice that president biden's mental faculties appeared diminished. >> there's a group called white dudes for harris, their wives and their wives' lovers are all voting for me. >> stay at the ymca.

>> donald trump's dancing to ymca i think i will a vote for him. >> i'm so confident i'll put my beard on it. >> it's here. >> a handful of problems. do you hear yourself? only a handful of apartment complexes. >> jocelyn nungaray laken riley. do you owe those families an apology. >> i can't imagine the pain that the families of those victims have experienced. >> if i start telling pain i'm going to cry i want to feel happy again. >> i lost my mother and my father, my aunt and uncle, my great aunt and uncle. >> people are running out of gas before you can even get to it. >> get in line like the rest of us. >> we have been in line. >> we are ready to turn the page. >> you've been in office for three and a half years. >> and donald trump has been running for office. you and i both know what i'm talking about. >> i actually don't. what are you talking bfrjts hannibal lecter. you know what i'm talking about. >> bret: that was a busy week. in addition to that, i recently sat down with cigar aficionado's

editor and publisher marvin to talk about this november's election the conflict in the middle east the war in ukraine a lot more. you can watch the video on line cigar aficionado.com read it in the november edition of the magazine check it out really good. marvin's great. monday special report my interview with jack nicklaus as he surprises veterans at the annual pga hope golf tournament. please watch shannon bream on fox news sunday her guests maryland governor wes moore and virginia governor glenn youngkin democrat and republican. remember if you can't catch us live set your dvr, 6:00 p.m. on the east 3:00 p.m. on the west coast or follow us on instagram at bret baier exclusive behind the scenes photos videos and more. thank you for inviting us into your home tonight every night, fair, balanced and unafraid. ♪ >> laura: good evening everyone i'm laura ingraham, this is the ingraham angle from washington tonight. thank you, as always, for being